


Atypical Fairytale

by TekSonay



Category: Howl no Ugoku Shiro | Howl's Moving Castle, Howl's Moving Castle - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fairy Tale, Beauty and the Beast Elements, Fantasy, Gen, Humor, Mystery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-11
Updated: 2020-12-11
Packaged: 2021-03-10 16:54:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,824
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28000488
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TekSonay/pseuds/TekSonay
Summary: In which a wandering minstrel spends the night at a fabled castle... An HMC Beauty and the Beast beginning. AU.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 17





	Atypical Fairytale

**Author's Note:**

> a/n: Written during NaNoWriMo 2020. A fairly simple piece that I enjoyed writing, I hope you enjoy it as well! Howl is unabashedly himself, always.

Cloak dripping and breath steaming, the beautiful man whistled beneath his breath as he took in the domed entry hall of a surprisingly homey castle.

Flower-patterned drapes, fresh daisies in vases, cheerful lamps dotting the walls, from the well-kept vegetable garden out front to the neat umbrella rack by the double front doors, this was not what he had expected from the infamous haunted house in the woods.

Oh well, what did he know about magic? He was only a minstrel. And a sodden one at that, that storm had really taken him by surprise.

He planted one foot on the plush carpet.

"Stop right there!"

A horrendous squawk split the air. He stiffened and yanked his foot back, a shudder traveling the length of his cloaked body at the sight of an ancient woman hobbling out from behind the grand staircase, her grey braid flopping behind her.

"You weren't about to ruin my carpet, were you?" she rasped, clutching her robe and wagging a crooked finger as she drew near. By God, she looked like she'd keel over any minute.

He pulled back his cowl and shook his head, wet golden hair swinging. "Why perish that thought, my esteemed lady! Not even in my own home would I dare such a crime." If he had a home, that is.

"Lady?" She halted and eyed him. "Humph. Another one of those superstitious fops, aren't you? Seeking this castle's beast, eh?"

"Absolutely not," he absolutely was, he was bored and needed inspiration so he could upstage that guitar-playing Justin. "Just ah, took a stroll and it rained, so popped in my head here."

"A stroll at night? Ten miles from town?" She snorted. He winced as it grated past his finely tuned ears. Then that wince became a grimace when his stomach embarrassed him with a squeal. The old woman chuckled. He didn't know if he liked that. She seemed harmless, but one never knew, maybe she had a taste for handsome, slim men.

"Fine, fine. Hold on. Beastly I may seem, but I have manners unlike a certain someone," she grouched.

The minstrel yelped when a hidden closet opened, and brooms came dancing out into the hall. They mopped around him, snagged his cloak, prodded him out of his boots. It was an alarming, fascinating experience. He noted the old woman was also barefoot and wore a frilly pink nightgown beneath her ugly robe. The gown was too girlish for her. He supposed some people never aged well.

She led him to a simple kitchen warmed by a deep fire on its last legs. In the middle was a low square table, and baskets and tableware and jars were all tucked neatly amongst the cupboards and counters. No coat of arms or fancy silverware or velvet divan. Just a tired rocking chair and more daisy curtains. The minstrel couldn't help feeling disappointed.

"What? Expecting a fancy parlor?"

 _It's a castle, isn't it?_ he thought petulantly, but aloud said, "This is the most elegant kitchen I've ever laid eyes on." He brightened when she hobbled over to the oven and pulled out some fluffy-looking bread loaves. Eagerly, he flipped his tailcoats back and sat himself at the table, long sleeves wagging as he tapped the table in anticipation. When he saw the old lady's brow twist, he realized she may have pulled something, and leaped to assist her. Faster to the table anyhow.

Her dull brown eyes stared at him in a daze. "Pah. Don't expect me to say thank you," she mumbled.

"It is I thanking you, of course," the minstrel cheered. He went the extra step to help lay out two plates, some polished utensils, and the butter pot. She snuck a glance at him and brought out the jam.

A minute later found him with a hot cup of tea in hand. Belatedly, he wondered if this was the beast's true trap. Greet them with a harmless grandma, fill their bellies, and then drag them off into the dungeon. If so, it was brilliant.

He toasted, "To you and the castle's master!" and took a sip.

"I am the castle's master."

He sputtered. Delicately, he wiped his mouth. "Ahem. Pardon?"

"A joke, see? Just like that 'Lady' bit," she said, twisting her bony fingers in her doily. Seeing his attention on her, she barked, "Well? It'll get cold, you know."

"Oh. Oh yes."

Was he really going to risk a curse and eat here? His gut twisted painfully. In reality, he had wandered the woods for nearly two days after storming off and getting lost. Not that minstrels ate every day, anyway, even exceptional talents like himself.

That was it!

"I'd like to repay my generous host tomorrow with a song," he tested, boasting, "I'm a renowned musician where I hail from."

"Really? What's your name?"

"Howl Jen-P-Pendragon." He sweated. That was close. Almost gave a magical being his birth name.

"Howl Jenpendragon? Never heard of you."

If not for the food, he'd storm out right this minute. Never heard of him? He was famous all the way to the capital!

But the small grandma continued, "It's been a long time since I've heard music." Her wrinkled eyes held a distant sparkle in them, and for a moment Howl pitied her. "If you wouldn't mind, these ears would rather like that."

Aha, success! There, at least he would live until tomorrow. He had to figure something out before then. Maybe after she went to bed, he could sneak out through the front garden. Proud to have bought himself some time, he tentatively took his first sip of tea. Warmth diffused through his chest. Delightful. He closed his blue-green eyes and sipped again. It was like having an emotion bath in a chair.

She tore a chunk of bread off for him and nudged the jam closer, settling back with her mug.

Howl gestured with a sticky spoon. "Are you going to eat?"

"Difficult. My teeth." She flashed a crooked, closed-mouth smile, before bringing her mug to her withered lips. Howl nodded. A friendly reminder to enjoy his youth.

When he took his first bite of that toasted, buttered bread, he nearly melted in his seat. He changed his mind. Bring on the entrapment, bring on the curses; he was going to live here as this old lady's minstrel!

Trying to be polite while stuffing his face, he tried to pry information from her. How long had she been here? Was this castle really cursed? Was there a reason she had planted begonias out front beside the hydrangeas? Most questions she turned back on him, aside from the begonias, and before Howl knew it he was spilling his life story. It was nice, you know? People ask for songs, songs, songs, but they never truly listen to _him_. So he told her about his childhood, and that mean music teacher who drove him away from home, and by the time he got to his tragic love life he heard a snore. The old lady was sitting upright, sleeping! Never had someone nodded off while he was making noise!

With a huff, Howl rattled the table. The old woman blinked heavily and stretched, making some horrendous bone-creaks.

"It's late. I assume you don't have a place to stay," she said, standing with difficulty. Howl moved to put the food away, but she waved him off. "It's fine. They'll do it." For a second time, brooms and pails shuffled out of a little closet like skeletal people. It was nerve-racking to watch and Howl ended up diving for the jam, anyway.

"Your staff are cleaning implements?"

"It's all I could come up with. I wasn't formally trained in magic," she said as she guided him back into the dimly lit entryway with the urgency of a houseplant. He started looking for a pot to place her in, because he doubted she'd make it to wherever they were going. "I was just beginning when, well, a big event happened. My teacher left along with everyone else."

"Big event, huh?" She must mean when she turned into a monster and began eating people, Howl theorized conspiratorially. Why else the big exodus? He racked his pretty head for tales. "Did you royally piss off a witch or something?" he joked.

"Hah! Pissed is mild for that evil hag," she said tiredly. Then she stiffened. "T-That is, wizards or witches, you don't want to get on their unpleasant sides, like wearing the same shoes and such."

Howl nodded sympathetically. That was certainly curse-worthy. But interesting reaction...

The majestic staircase opened its rails to them, but the little old lady led him to a small, cozy parlor tucked behind it. Someone had dragged an aged but neat chaise lounge before the fireplace. The dining table had been pushed to the far wall and was covered in crafting materials: fabrics, embroidery hoops, knitting needles and things. Flower clippings. Neatly stacked books. It appeared she spent a lot of time here.

While he was snooping, she had been preparing the chaise lounge, and Howl admitted it looked comfortable, all laid out with a white padded quilt and fluffed pillow. When she was finished, the old woman hobbled past him to a corner, and for the first time he noticed she favored her right leg. An injury? Bad hip? Grey braid swinging over her shoulder, she bent to dig through a basket of cloth. She pulled out a pair of man's nightclothes. Howl swallowed. Where did she get those? A previous victim?

She turned and paused wearily at his nervous expression. He tried to school it with a broad smile.

"My late father's," she said gruffly. She shoved them at him and beckoned he follow. Howl delicately held up the outfit and blanched. Just how old was this thing?

A short ways down another hallway, with carpeted floors fancy as the entryway, was a bathing room: bird-clawed tub, marble tile floors, an elegant sink with wings forming the bowl shape. The tub had a stepping stool, and a cane was propped against it. He shouldn't be picky, but there was nothing sexy about this.

"Everything you need is in the cupboard." She wrapped her robe tighter to her lumpy body, pink collar poking out, looking ready to pass out on her feet. "Leave your dirty clothes in the corner. My helpers will have them washed for you by morning. Now it's past my bedtime. I'll see you for breakfast."

"Your benevolence is boundless, madam. Your hospitality is -"

"Stop."

"... Thank you."

She nodded and shut the door. Howl slid to it and twisted the lock.

Then he sank to the tile.

Whew! Charmed a witch. Take that, Justin the Bland!

She might simply prefer her victims be plump and scrubbed before eating them, but he didn't mind. Free meal. Free bath. Free bed. Did she have any idea how much this service cost at a regular inn?

So scrubba-dub-dub, the handsome young minstrel climbed into that tub. He washed his lovely golden locks, singing quietly as the bubbles floated around him.

Once he had dried himself off and finished admiring the scent of her hair oils - home-made organics?- he slipped the nightclothes over his lean body. To his pleasant surprise, they weren't that ancient at all, perhaps sewn for a much older, shorter, wider man, but at least styled within this century. Just how old was her father when he died? Was their curse an immortality one?

Howl snorted. Honestly, this whole curse narrative was getting out of hand. Not that he was dismissing it. But more and more it simply seemed like he had stumbled into the life of a lonely old woman. Maybe her children had moved away and older family members had passed. She couldn't bear to part with the place so used a bit of magic to help her upkeep. Why else would she take in a stranger?

Nodding to himself, he bundled up his dirty tunic and trousers and tucked them where she'd asked. Then he quietly unlocked the door.

Dark walls stretched eerily towards a large moon-drenched window at the end of the hall, casting glints on rows of door handles. Shadows scuttled across the floor from the wind-tossed trees outside. By Ingary, it was creepy.

Effortlessly the coward, the minstrel scampered off towards the parlor haven. Once inside, he locked the door, then launched himself beneath the covers on the couch. Clean, relaxed, and warm, he stretched out, and finally the minstrel closed his eyes on the fire fluttering mischievously in the hearth.

Several minutes went by.

Of course he couldn't sleep; he was in an enchanted castle! And not only that but _the_ enchanted castle of the local legends, home to a monster, a beast, or a witch, a castle people entered but did not leave. Maybe the old lady would send him away in the morning. Maybe he would be breakfast. Who would know? Probably not him! So tonight was his chance.

Wrapping the quilt around his wide shoulders, he tiptoed through the cracked doorway. The entrance hall loomed overhead ominously. Howl listened. Then…

The kitchen.

Where she'd keep the leftovers from her victims, of course. From the rustling noises, it sounded like the brooms were still helping mop up. No tongues tell no tales.

Blanket sweeping behind him, he snuck barefoot across the carpet. He still thought it odd to build a kitchen by the entryway, but hey, best practice when coming home hungry.

Eerie shadows pooled in the short hallway leading there, and he slipped by his boots tucked under a bench, past his cloak dripping on a rack beneath dried, dead flowers hanging from hooks. Warily he peeked into the kitchen. Empty. Table spotless. Curtains drawn over the little window. A clock ticked somewhere. Now that he was paying attention, Howl noticed the bronze timepiece nailed over the sink. Four minutes until midnight.

A thump nearly scared the tea out of him.

Plastering himself to the wall, the minstrel saw there was another door at the end of the hall. This, too, had the glow of a fire. A disturbing shuffling. Splashing. The rasping scrapes of metal. Wheezing. The old lady was doing who knows what in there! Hadn't she said she was going to bed?

This was it, the moment of truth. Bracing himself, the blonde minstrel thought of the song he would sing, of the brave hero who faced the demon in darkness while armed only with a white sheet, his sense of humor, and his good looks. And if no one saw nor heard from him again, oh the dirges they would drone in the pubs about the tragic youth deposed of his comely head!

A breath he took. His hand, it shook! And dexterous as a spider he peered - no, scratch that, horrid visual - with instincts sharp as a wolf's, the heroic man spied into the castle's dungeon.

A blazing fire devoured a log in the wall. In the middle of the thick, stone floor was a water pump, and sitting before it the ancient woman wiped her ferocious brow of sweat before jabbing her spindly hands down again. Howl flinched. Her bent back hunched over her prey, which she dragged limply up and down, strangling it again and again into the large bucket of sudsy water.

"Prey" being clothes. His dirty, damp clothes. Which he had left in the bathroom. For the brooms.

Oh.

Guess some things can't be trusted to the cleaning supplies.

Struck, the minstrel watched the tiny old lady wash his clothes for him. She was sturdier than she appeared, he thought in admiration. But when she rubbed her face with the back of her wrinkled wrists, from which she had pushed back her sleeves, her skinny arms trembled. She held them up and stared at them. She stared so long Howl wondered if she had maybe died like that.

Suddenly she grabbed the top of her washboard and crossed her arms, burying her face in them. She had cast her robe on a chair in the corner, so she looked like a bundle of pink topped with a froth of silver grey.

"It's hopeless," she murmured, then said no more.

A minute later, a giant, rattling sigh leaked out of her. Howl nearly jumped out of his freshly scrubbed skin. She really did die!

He waited, frozen, hearing the clock in the other room, the insistent hisses of the fire. Self-preservation warred with humanity. Run? Scope the castle? Steal some candelabras? Poke her to see if she's breathing?

Tick.

Tick.

Tick.

Tick.

This is why he had never become a monk; altruism was not instinctive. That and the whole chastity thing.

A small tear formed at the corner of his eye when he heard a slow breath, followed by another. Okay, so she had simply fallen asleep - thank God! Breakfast would have been terribly awkward eating with a corpse next door.

Right when he was debating between slipping away or waking her so she doesn't drown, a strange event occurred.

The braid that stretched long and brittle on the old lady's back darkened and thickened, a rich brown pouring like paint from the top of her head to the ribbon-wrapped tip. Bared forearms smoothed, her plump back shrunk. Blinking several times, the minstrel patted his cheeks and squinted through the firelight, an intense curiosity gripping him.

Cautiously padding across the wet floor, he tried to see her face. With a swallow he bent close. His eyebrows made a leap for his hairline when her sleeping face turned towards him. Tender cheeks. Small nose. Full eyebrows. Dark eyelashes. A young woman!

What transformation sorcery was this?!

Illusion magic? His magician friends sometimes slipped on masks to change their faces, but he never saw the woman move. He almost couldn't contain his excitement.

Crouching in his nightclothes, he poked her nose. She wrinkled it unconsciously. Taking a risk, he tentatively ran his thumb along her jaw. How real it felt!

Dumbfounded, he watched her snooze for a moment. Suds dripped off her drooping fingers. Her loose pink collar bared a neck covered in goosebumps. He thought of the big empty castle. How she had all but rushed him at her door, dragged him into her warm kitchen, gave him a place to stay and was now doing his laundry. That was her bed, wasn't it, that chaise lounge? An odd feeling twisted his chest.

She moaned. Like a cat he bolted from the room! Ten minutes went by, maybe fifteen. The thief watching the sleeping giant, he waited for the glamor to fall and for her to awake. Because if she let those clothes soak all night, she'd ruin them.

Soon he didn't know how much time passed because he nodded off. Shameful, really. His days as a mystery-busting, musical adventurer would be short-lived if he couldn't get it together. Rubbing his eyes (gently, as not to make wrinkles) he leaned back and peered at the clock in the kitchen. Past one in the morning. Sighing, he ran his fingers through his flaxen locks, ready to get back to that chaise lounge. He could get back to risking his life again in a few hours.

Except…

Young or old, beast or not well... it wouldn't be very thankful of him to let his host sleep over her bucket, would it?

"Excuse me," he said politely from the door.

No response. Creeping closer, he cleared his throat. "Pardon me, lady?"

Several fruitless shoulder shakes later, he cast his gaze upwards to the peony-painted plaster.

After a great internal debate, he picked the castle master up.

He was a minstrel: in other words dainty-fingered, didn't lift over twenty pounds a day. The princess-carry unfortunately did not make his skill set. Suffice to say, the journey to the parlor involved a lot of trudging, sweating and prayers.

Feeling like he had run from a bear, the panting man gazed down at the person he had draped across the covers. Firelight danced softly across her features. Dazed by the unexpected sight, he began composing a song to her gentle beauty.

He tucked her in, then tired-eyed went back to do his own damn laundry. Altruism was such a heavy burden.

Afterwards, he tossed his desire to explore the castle in the laundry bucket and promptly fell asleep on the kitchen bench. When he woke hours later after a fitful whatever that was - definitely not a full beauty cycle - his limbs creaked with aches and pains. Ouch! Oh! His lithe neck! Giving a concert in this condition would be a performance death warrant.

Blinking heavy eyelids, he realized someone else was in the kitchen with him. He shot up, causing an unfamiliar blue quilt to slide off his lap. A wondrous aroma thickened the air.

Dishes covered the table: bacon, sliced apples, bread and butter like the day before. His eyes widened when a familiar person carried a heavy, cast-iron skillet from the fire to a potholder on the table. She froze. They stared at each other for a long moment.

She spoke first. "Last night..."

The old lady was back!

Howl tilted closer when she hesitated. He tried finding her youthful face in her old one. Did she remember what happened?

He wet his lips and narrowed his gaze. "How could I let someone as dear as my grandmother sleep in the kitchen? Hm? You take me for an irresponsible youth? I'll prove you wrong."

Her expression took on a mix of confusion and relief. She ducked her head. "Ho ho, prove me wrong, will you? This boy can't even find his way in a forest."

"That's right, I'm hopelessly lost. I don't know when I'll recover my sense of direction." He took the serving utensils from her and began filling their plates.

"You're staying here then, is that what you're saying?"

"I owe you that song."

"Hah! What a mooch. A few songs is only fair, after all you've received from me," she muttered gruffly, but he could tell she was pleased. Bashful, even! What a cute little granny-beauty hybrid.

He didn't really have much going on back home, and his plan to humiliate Justin could wait. There was a story here, a mystery to unveil, a song to write. Besides, it would take him a while to repay all the gardening tips he would learn, the laundry he would pile up, the snacks he would sneak, the bath water he would waste, the near heart attacks she would give him... Wait, payback on that last one might not be the best idea.

Leaning on his palm, he pictured her young face again. "What's your name?"

She put down the teapot. A debate.

"Sophie," she said finally.

Howl grinned and picked up her hand. "Nice to meet you, Lady Sophie."

"Hush up and eat your food."

"Yes, ma'am."


End file.
